Engineered Lego®-like microphysiological models of the human airway
clearance phenomena
Abstract
Mucociliary clearance is a crucial event that supports the elimination
of inhaled particles, bacteria, pollution and hazardous agents from the
human airways, and it also limits the diffusion of aerosolized drugs
into the airway epithelium. In spite of its relevance, few in vitro
models sufficiently address the cumulative effect of the steric and
interactive barrier function of mucus on the one hand, and the dynamic
mucus transport imposed by ciliary mucus propulsion on the other hand.
Here, ad hoc mucus models of physiological and pathological mucus are
combined with magnetic artificial cilia to model mucociliary transport
in both physiological and pathological states. The Lego®-like concept
adopted, in this study, enables the development of mucociliary clearance
models with high versatility, since these can be easily modified to
reproduce phenomena characteristic of healthy and diseased human
airways, while allowing to determine the effect of each parameter and/or
structure separately on the overall mucociliary transport. These
Lego®-like airway models can be available off-the-shelf because they are
exclusively made of readily available materials, thus ensuring
reproducibility across different laboratories.